Just an Update

It’s been awhile since I posted last, so I figured a quick catch up was in order of things I’m thinking about or interested in. I may write more about these topics in the future, but for now, I think a quick couple paragraphs for each will do.

AngularJS

So a friend of mine has been bugging me just about every time I meet him. What does he bug me about? Well, since we work in different fields but similar disciplines, he bugs me about what his boss is bugging him about: Angular. He’s wondering if it would be a good solution for them to use internally for tracking tools. I hated telling him that I didn’t know anything about Angular. Of course, I felt really silly after it happened a couple times after not seeing him for awhile. Ok, time to buckle down and see what this was all about.

Well, I did. I gotta say just after looking at the basic abilities of it, Angular has me really excited. Obviously it is completely ready for production use right now, just not by me. After learning a bit about it, going through some tutorials and sandboxing some ideas, I have been able to get a grasp of some of it. Unfortunately, not enough to make me feel comfortable to work with it on a real project.

I’ve already seen a few nice spots for use cases of it at my current job, but it doesn’t have enough traction to make people want to really risk taking the time to learn and use it. What does that mean? I’ll have to do that on my own time. But that’s okay. It fits in with something else I’ve had on my mind…

App Itch

Lately, I’ve really had this feeling that I should try to expand my design skills in the application department. While there are loads of web projects I could re-imagine, lately what’s really getting me excited is interaction. The place where interaction design seems most prominent is in application design UI. I recently stumbled upon this site, Use Your Interface, which has some great animated gifs of simple interactions. I’ve also seen some really inspiring designs lately on Behance that make me want to just give it a whirl.

What would I do for my first app? I’m thinking of something I can use personally and get some solid opinion on with my nerd friends. Obviously this would be a great way to also dive into using Angular on a real project. I’ve already got some specs for the app in my head, hopefully I can design it soon.

Redesigns

While I feel it may be a bit too early for a redesign of this site, I really want to do some redesigning of other sites. So I may do some redesign concepts soon, just because. I think part of the reason I’ve had this feeling and the app one lately is because work lately has left me pretty stagnant with the same client for awhile, so I need to “feed the beast” as it were.

One I’m personally thinking of doing would be thetvdb.org. While it’s not a very popular site (like IMdb), it has a lot of the same assets and ideas behind it, so it could be a fun one to think about. I think I’d like to stick to some lesser known sites, just because everyone does Facebook or Twitter (at least it seems like it).

I Love SVG

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of love for SVG. In my opinion, it is totally deserved. The more I learn about SVG, the more I’m just into it. Between Snap, some neat tricks lately on CSS-Tricks (custom SVG and Wordpress, Icon Systems) and learning about Iconic, SVG is just blowing my mind lately.

What’s weird is SVG has been around, but we haven’t been able to reliably use it between the major players in the browser world. Now that IE is getting to a point where version 8 is really the only issue (if you even support it), SVG as a solution to vector graphics is finally a viable alternative. With tie-ins with CSS, animation, and other tricks, I’m really excited to see what people think up of with it. I’m also thinking more about what I can do with it.

With CSS support (in the right circumstances) and automatic high DPI support, I really don’t see why you wouldn’t use it. Tied with Modernizr, IE8 may not even be that big of an issue for most people. Time will tell, but I think the future is finally bright for SVG.